Casualties of the Revolution
Written: Mar 23 '09 (Updated Mar 25 '09)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great dance scenes, visually informative plot, lack of clutter.
Cons: They took a secondary loser character and named him Earl, again.
The Bottom Line: The main characters had it rough but they end up teaching us about the workaday world we live in, the good and the bad.
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| topreviewerman's Full Review: Revolutionary Road |
"Everything will come right if you only believe the Gypsy." It's a beautiful moody song to open with, but one of the characters finds herself disillusioned mighty early on in the film. It's 1948. Across a crowded room their eyes meet. They're drawn to each other. They make small talk. She's studying to be an actress. He's a longshoreman, about to start as a night cashier at a cafeteria. They dance. They connect.
Next scene is in 1955, the result of that connection. They're married now, living out in the suburbs—way out in the suburbs. Frank Wheeler (Leonardo DiCaprio) is one of the anonymous faces working on the 15th floor of the Knox building, trying (with somewhat diminished resolve) to sell their business machines, but tonight he is at the opening of his wife April's (Kate Winslet) small-time amateur play. The play sucks—"She was very disappointing." He tries to console her but to no avail. She's in her own private funk and wants him to just "stop talking before you drive me crazy." We get the impression she doesn't have far to go.
The whole movie is a lot like that. I counted no fewer than nine times someone had so shush someone else. Then there was twice the dance music was turned down so we could visually appreciate the couple connecting. (That's not to mention the "visual aids" which don't even exist.) This movie is meant to be appreciated visually, because for all the fireworks in the fighting, the words don't convey what the problem is. We have to figure it out visually.
I'm going to cheat here, quote a book. Am I allowed to do that? From Rudolph R. Dreikurs, M.D., Fundamentals of Adlerian Psychology (© 1953), the chapter on THE FICTIVE GOALS—THE MASCULINE PROTEST.
All feelings of uncertainty and inferiority give rise to a need for an objective to guide,
reassure and make life bearable. … ¶Our civilization is mainly a masculine civilization, and
the child gets the impression that while all adults enjoy superior powers the man's position is
superior to the woman's. … ¶The woman's rôle seems to be one of service and longsuffering.
… ¶We find that women also have masculine goals if they are unwilling to accept their sex rôle.
… ¶The masculine goal is, of course, only a fiction …. ¶The fiction of a final goal of power attracts all
human beings, especially people who feel uncertain of themselves, such as neurotics. The influence
of this fictive goal is enormous. It draws all psychic forces in its direction.
April had a goal to be an actress. Now she feels trapped as a housewife without any possibility to make her mark in the world. The influence of that goal was so powerful that it drew all her psychic forces in that direction and underlay all her scheming and fighting. That is my take on it from having seen Revolutionary Road twice. But don't trust a reviewer. Watch the movie with an open mind and see if you don't reach a similar conclusion.
After that first argument, she is going through some old photos and comes across one of Frank in uniform standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. She remembers him saying how much he liked Paris and tries to talk him into quitting his job (which he hates) and moving his whole family there where she will support him while he finds himself. "Do you have any idea how much secretarial positions pay for government agencies in Europe?" Happily, he is open to the idea. The rest of the movie, for the most part, deals with whether he will have the backbone to follow through with her on it.
A pattern emerges here which I think is just beautiful and made me love this movie. Did you ever wonder where hippies came from, or where their precursors were before the 60s? Or for that matter, do you have some clear notion what a "hippie" is so you'd recognize one even if he isn't dressed in love beads and long hair? And if hippiedom is some kind of revolutionary road, where did that road start? Actually, they've been around a while.
Sociologist Bennett Berger wrote an essay "Hippie Morality—More Old than New" for transaction/Society magazine in around 1970 which I quote from as reprinted in John H. Gagnon & William Simon, The Sexual Scene (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 2nd ed., © 1973) pp. 65ff:
More than 30 years ago [from 1970], the literary critic Malcolm Cowley wrote Exile's Return, a book about the
experience of American literary expatriates in Europe in the 1920's. In it he treats to some extent
the history of bohemianism, starting back in the middle of the 19th century with that important document
of bohemian history, Henry Murger's Scenes of Bohemian Life. By 1920, Cowley says, bohemia
had a relatively formal doctrine, "a system of ideas that could be roughly summarized as follows:
§ "The idea of female equality.—Women should be the economic and moral equals of men …" with
respect to cultural differences between the sexes, and evident in the insistence that men may be gentle and
women aggressive, and in the merging of sexually related symbols of adornment (long hair, beads, bells,
colorful clothes, and so on).
§ Cowley's final point in the bohemian doctrine is the old romantic love of the exotic. "The idea of changing place.—'They do things better in …'" (you name it).
§ "The idea of self-expression.——Each man's, each woman's, purpose in life is to express himself, to
realize his full individuality through creative work and beautiful living in beautiful surroundings." This,
I believe is identical with the hippies' moral injunction to "do your thing."
I've just listed three of the eight above, but these are the three "Revolutionary Road" is most concerned with: women's equality, that things are better in an exotic place (Paris), and having the backbone to "do your thing." In case my reader leaps to the conclusion that hippie style bohemianism started in the middle of the 19th century, I'd like to point out that it's older than that. Thousands of years ago there was this young man named Elihu who took it upon himself to contradict his elders in their heated debate, and God Himself answered them out of the whirlwind, which answer is preserved in Job and includes a description of eight animals God made that correspond to the eight points of the bohemian doctrine, three of which I'll cite here: Love of the exotic is represented by the raven who travels far and wide to scavenge food: (Job 38:41) "Who provideth for the raven his food? when his young ones cry unto God, they wander for lack of meat." Female equality is represented by the ostrich who can forget motherhood for the sake of a good run: (Job 39:13-18) "Gavest thou the goodly wings unto the peacocks? or wings and feathers unto the ostrich? Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in dust, And forgetteth that the foot may crush them, or that the wild beast may break them. She is hardened against her young ones, as though they were not her's: her labour is in vain without fear; Because God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath he imparted to her understanding. What time she lifteth up herself on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." And doing one's thing is represented by the horse who knows no fear, to the extent of rushing headlong into a raging battle: (Job 39:19-25) "Hast thou given the horse strength? hast thou clothed his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a grasshopper? the glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paw-eth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He mocketh at fear, and is not affrighted; neither turneth he back from the sword. The quiver rattleth against him, the glittering spear and the shield. He swalloweth the ground with fierceness and rage: neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting."
Once we understand that we're dealing with bohemianism as in nascent hippiedom, then the question the movie tackles is why it didn't just spring forth in the circumstances the screen depicted. Oh, but that has to do with the times, the late 1940s to early 1950s. To put it into perspective, I'd like to cite from Stanley Elkin's novel The Rabbi of Lud (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1987) p. 10, originally appearing in Chicago magazine in Oct. 1986; from a kid's perspective:
This is the end of the 1940s, before the X-ray machines in shoe stores could irradiate your toe bones,
before cigarettes could kill you with cancer, before blacks, before projects, ghettos and changing neighborhoods,
before juvenile delinquency even. This was a golden age when wholesale was wholesale and your edge
was real. I'm living the good life on Chicago's South Side. My daddy's rich and my ma is good lookin'.
Taking them one at a time, first there was technology (X-ray machines). Do you know what computers were like at that time? Frank gives April a glowing description of one his company is about to acquire. It's like "a big fast adding machine," he tells her, but "instead of mechanical parts, it has thousands of individual vacuum tubes." Imagine that! You're not going to be able to take your laptop with you to Gai Paris and work from home. Not in 1955. Even if you could afford a computer and find some way to pack it onto the steamer, it'd like to sink the ship.
This was "before cigarettes could kill you." Hippies were partly motivated to get back to nature, away from the dangerous substances of modern life. But back in the 40s even cigarettes were safe. Watch the way they smoke. Is anyone concerned? Not in the least.
"Before blacks." There was no class-envy movement for women's rights to piggyback onto. There was not a single black in the whole movie. They must not have had them at that time.
"Before projects, ghettos and changing neighborhoods." The poor have a way of challenging the rich and their lifestyle, making them feel guilty and so predisposing them to change, try something new. But back then there weren't any really poor neighborhoods. Helen (Kathy Bates) the real estate agent gives them a thorough tour of the neighborhood. Sure, there are mostly "cinder blocky places for carpenters, plumbers, working people of that sort," on Crawford Rd., but they'll only admire the Wheelers' place on Revolutionary Rd., not challenge them to change their lifestyle.
"Before juvenile delinquency even." Yes, the Wheelers' children were too young to be a problem moving them to Paris, but so was the baby boomer generation too young at that time to start their own movements.
Now we get down to the crux of the matter, "when wholesale was wholesale and your edge was real." Companies were so unversed in what we'd consider modern practices that anyone with good ideas had a real edge—even, as it turns out, he thought he was just making up excuses to get out of work. Man, when Frank's buzzer sounded and the light lit up on his cubicle summoning him to the big boss's office, I thought for sure it would be an application of the Japanese business slogan, "the nail that sticks out gets pounded down," not the American one, "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Even seeing the movie the second time, and knowing how the meeting turns out, I still felt the same way Frank's cubicle neighbor did: "Keep my name out of it." Do they sometimes run alternate cuts of the same movie? I didn't want to take the chance.
Yes, Frank had an opportunity to go to Paris and live a whole different kind of life. But he also had opportunity at work, a real edge. I compare that to my situation being graduated from an engineering school in 1970. Yes, my degree gave me opportunities, but not that much of an edge in and of itself. The hippie commune bus across the street that was getting ready for a road trip might have seemed less appealing had I had more of an edge in my field.
"Revolutionary Road" helps me understand better my parents and their generation. If they weren't as "hip" as I once thought they should be, maybe they were as hip as possible under the circumstances. It is Helen the realtor who put it best when she brought April some "seedum plantings" for use "by the messy patch down by the driveway." They're "like the European house leek," she said. They just need a "tiny dollop of water the first few days; then it absolutely thrives." The hippies were going to be a movement that absolutely thrives, having started from European bohemianism, but what is that little bit of water—"remember, just a dollop"—needed to get them going? Helen provides the answer to that too, in the person of her mentally unwell son John who speaks his mind with a philosophy strangely reminiscent of the beatniks. He's the only one who seems to understand Frank and April's new vision.
I quote from John W. Whitehead's historical overview work, Grasping for the Wind (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001) pp. 159, 164. "The poets and novelists of the Beat generation provided some of the clearest commentary on the alienation and pessimism of postwar Western culture. … ¶"On the Road and other Beat works formed a cultural bridge to the 1960s." Helen's son John was that mouthpiece in "Revolutionary Road" expressing the "alienation and pessimism" of the time. He was almost too loud, but then the beatniks (whom he represented) were given to drama.
The beatniks were really anti-conformity, and we see that conformity represented in the sea of suits Frank joins heading off to work—much like the opening scenes of Joe Versus the Volcano—and the uniform rows of garbage cans stretching down the street that April adds hers to. Frank's disillusionment with his job was much like that of Bill Murray's drinking companions in Groundhog Day when he complained to them about every day being the same, and knowing tomorrow will be no different. They knew exactly what he meant.
What actually develops in the film is Frank doting on his children, but then that's one of the tenets of the hippie/bohemian dogma too. From Berger,
§ "The first point in the bohemian doctrine is what Cowley calls "The idea of salvation by the child.—
Each of us at birth has special potentialities which are slowly crushed and destroyed by a
standardized society and mechanical modes of teaching. If a new educational system can be introduced,
one by which children are encouraged to develop their own personalities, to [listen!] blossom freely
like flowers, then the world will be saved by this new, free generation."
Flower children are, of course, found there in the Bible too: (Job 39:1-4) "Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? or knowest thou the time when they bring forth? They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. Their young ones are in good liking, they [listen!] grow up with corn; they go forth, and return not unto them."
This movie is a microcosm of the macrocosm of our society developing hippies. They've been a powerful influence on all of us, which is why an otherwise mundane plot can be so deeply affecting. And just to balance Frank's seemingly harsh—at times—indifference to April's plight, we are given Howard, Helen's husband who seems to find just the right knack to letting her be to work outside the home—as a real estate agent.
There is one bit of direction I thought was really smart which might be worth pointing out. The shock of friends and neighbors being told of Frank and April's planned move to Paris. I think those aftershocks were well done. I remember hearing third hand of my parents' visit from the two guys in the apartment below mine who were planning a motorcycle trip across the country. I ran into them in Colorado. After the exuberance of meeting up, they related my parents' visit. They were moving to Florida and decided to swing by Ohio to see their son who'd just been graduated from college. They knocked on my apartment door and asked for me. My housemate replied, "Earl? He's not here. … He left yesterday. … On the bus." Ever after that I could elicit raised eyebrows from them by mentioning going anywhere on the bus. There was so much shock at this couple going to Paris, that their friends were still in shock after they'd had time to assimilate it.
The acting in this movie was so good I think even the extras deserve oscars. Before you rush out to see it with a bunch of the girls, I do want to recommend sensitivity to anyone who's ever had an abortion. The arguments surrounding that subject might be too intense for someone who's ever had one.
Otherwise, I think it's a great film for adults even though it doesn't follow typical Hollywood formulas for either romance or road trips. The period music is really good. If we feel affected by some of the large movements of our times, I think it wouldn't hurt to share a common movie viewing experience related to those phenomena. Especially one that's as well done as this one is.
Special note to people who have trouble with my reviews: The Rabbi of Lud in the novel of the same name found the haphtarah passage from Prophets too onerous to recite for his bar mitzvah, so they delayed it three months waiting for an "eensy miniscripture" to come round that he could handle. If my Bible quotes are too long, please be patient. There are bound to be shorter ones in reviews coming up.
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Serious Movie
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Nothing
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Epinions.com ID:
topreviewerman
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Member: Earl Gosnell
Location: Eugene, OR
Reviews written: 87
Trusted by: 2 members
About Me:
BSEE, U. of Cincinnati. Ordained minister, United Congregation of Friends. Poet Laureate, Longfellow, Colorado.
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